Much of the scholarly discussion of Kurt Vonnegut lies in literary circles, with few historical accounts by historians discussing Vonnegut at any length (when he is mentioned in historical pieces, it is within the context of lists of authors or works that never delve into specific discussions of Vonnegut himself).[1] However, it should be noted that there are some works by literary scholars, which look at Vonnegut in terms of the historical context he inhabits, as well as the ways which he is historically informed in his publications. In fact, Jerome Klinkowitz in his 2011 work Kurt Vonnegut’s America is probably the best example of this type of contextualization of Vonnegut, along with those who discuss Vonnegut’s views on war.[2] The relationship between war and Vonnegut will be explored more at the end of this section, along with Ginger Strand and her research on the Vonnegut brothers and their time at General Electric. More of the analysis of Vonnegut has centered on attempts to classify him as a writer, specifically turning into debates on whether he was a modernist or a postmodernist, as well as other genre considerations. Literary scholars define modernism as self-consciousness and irony, with an explicit rejection of the ideology of realism, as opposed to postmodernism which encompasses a skepticism or rejection of grand narratives, ideologies and various tenets of universalism, though the lines between them are much fuzzier than these distinctions would suggest. There are critics on both sides, such as Jerome Klinkowitz who is firmly of the belief that Vonnegut was a postmodernist and M. Keith Booker who discusses him at length in relation to other authors that he sees as modern. Specifically, for the purposes of this paper, classifying Vonnegut as either a modernist or postmodernist is less important than the historical considerations of the works of Vonnegut and his views on science and technology during the 1950s. I lean towards the conclusion which Robert Tally reaches in his 2011 work Kurt Vonnegut and the American Novel, that Vonnegut writes like a modernist, but discusses topics that are postmodern, thus making the debate about which category, modern or postmodern, he inhabits fuzzy and incomplete.[3]

Another major literary discussion of Vonnegut concerns an attempt to classify the type of fiction which Vonnegut was producing, mainly to try to understand if Vonnegut was a science fiction writer, science fiction being an important area of study for understanding the period of the 1950s. The 1950s was a high period for the production of both written and visual science fiction, so attempts to classify Vonnegut as one of those writers remains important to many literary scholars. From a literary standpoint, the genre of science fiction typically deals with imaginative concepts such as futuristic science and technology, space and time travel, parallel universes and extraterrestrial life. It often explores the potential consequences of scientific and technological innovations, usually avoiding tropes of the fantasy genre. Historically, science-fiction has had a grounding in actual science, but now this is only expected of what is now called “hard” science fiction. The attempt to classify Vonnegut as a genre writer is due, in part, to the publication of the novel The Sirens of Titan, a novel depicting alien invasion, occupying distant planets and moons, and teleportation. Writers such as Peter Freese in The Clown of Armageddon and Hartley Spatt in “Kurt Vonnegut: Ludic Luddite” are quick to point out the many scientific themes which Vonnegut explores in his texts, from the evolutionary process in Galapagos to the tricky physics of being unstuck in time in Slaughterhouse-Five.[4] Furthering the argument asserting Vonnegut as a writer of science fiction are those who make close comparisons between Player Piano and dystopian novels contemporary with it, mainly Brave New World and 1984, such as Daniels, Bowen, and Tally.[5] These writers do well to point out that, while they firmly believe Vonnegut occupies a space in the science fiction writers pantheon, that he often fits well with dystopian fiction (and the business of whether he is a modernist or a postmodernist is never really resolved.) Vonnegut is difficult to categorize even for those whose sole purpose is to place him within a specific literary category.

One can even point to the words of the man himself. When discussing the publication of his first novel, Player Piano which grapples with the relationship of man and machine and has clear overtones of science fiction, Vonnegut said, “there was no avoiding it since the General Electric Company was science fiction.”[6] However, Vonnegut also said, in his autobiography, A Man Without a Country,

I became a so-called science fiction writer when someone declared that I was a science fiction writer. I did not want to be classified as one, so I wondered in what way I’d offended that I would not get credit for being a serious writer. I decided that it was because I wrote about technology, and most fine American writers know nothing about technology. I got classified as a science fiction writer simply because I wrote about Schenectady, New York.[7]

 

He brings up a fair point. There is a fundamental disconnect between literary critics and the subject matter which Vonnegut discusses. His understanding of technology comes from his experiences at Cornell, in the military, and working at General Electric.[8] From his perspective, Vonnegut is simply telling the truth as he sees it, in an increasingly technical world. It is difficult to classify Vonnegut from a literary standpoint as a science fiction writer, since his commentary on science and technology utilizes contemporary science and technology rather than contemplating futuristic visions (in Player Piano the way that Vonnegut envisions computers is close to what actual computers for example, looked and functioned like in 1952). However, future technology and science are not necessary for a classification as science fiction, and in fact, like H.G. Wells and Mary Shelley before him, the fact that Vonnegut occupies the present in his text helps to make his arguments more profound.

Vonnegut’s objection might have to do with the precarious nature of being classified as a genre writer, because it can often be a way of dismissing an author. From the historian’s point of view, on the other hand, the precise classification is not a critical matter, but, I would argue that Kurt Vonnegut did write science fiction in so much as his fiction deals heavily with science and technology in realistic settings and grapples with ethics and morality. This is not an effort to dismiss him as a genre writer, as would be done in literary circles, but instead to place him among his contemporaries, such as Isaac Asimov, who strove to understand changing scientific and technological environments.

When Vonnegut is discussed in relation to technology, an overwhelming theme of this critics have generally concluded Vonnegut rejected the notion of technological “progress.” Most scholars seem to agree that Vonnegut is skeptical of the way which technology works in the twentieth century.[9]  Everyone who points to Vonnegut’s discussion of science and technology is not necessarily making the argument that he is a science fiction writer. Critics such as Loree Rackstraw, Jeff Karon, Adam Bogar, and Lorna Jowett are working to understand the fundamental nature of how Vonnegut grapples with science and technology in his texts.[10] There are overwhelming themes within his works, even if the worlds he creates are less works of science fiction and more discussions of the overlapping nature of science and fiction. Spratt’s main argument is that Vonnegut exhibits a grow in his discussion of technology throughout his career, becoming at once more fearful and yet less pessimistic as the decades of his career progress.[11] While Spatt does try to discuss Vonnegut as a science fiction writer, he does well to point out that there is more to Vonnegut’s discussion of science and technology than the genre of science fiction can capture, there is something real and raw to the power of Vonnegut’s fears of technology. “His fear of machinery has a nightmare corollary, running through all of Vonnegut’s novels: the image of mechanized humanity, people who have become no more than machines.”[12] Spatt also points to the realness of the way Vonnegut ends the world in Cat’s Cradle and Galapagos (1985). Both works portray the world as we know it ending through acts of science gone awry, which while fictional and fanciful, never overly complicate the science involved, and never seem far-fetched.[13] The most overwhelming discussion of science and technology surrounding the work of Vonnegut, though, is the way which he plays with time, particularly in Slaughterhouse-Five though also in some of his earlier works, especially The Sirens of Titan, where the protagonist is also “unstuck” in time.

Two other areas of interest in Vonnegut are about: 1) the way which religion and morality work in his writing and 2) the function of war. The critical consensus is that while Vonnegut is overwhelmingly critical of organized, modern religions, underlying each of his novels is a plea for a more moral and ethical society, in whatever form that may take. Both literary scholars, and I, find this underlying morality to be the more interesting vein of study than the mechanics of the religions which Vonnegut presents. Paul Thomas, Claire Allen, David Andrews, and Donald Morse all wrestle with and come to the conclusion that while the functions of an organized religion are often repulsive to Vonnegut morality in general is of the utmost importance to maintaining both order in society and humanity in general.[14] Thomas states,

Vonnegut offers contemporary readers universal considerations of the complexities inherent in the human condition (his persistent wrestling with free will, for example), and his works create numerous alternate universes that are essentially mirrors of our real world, focusing often on humans creating our own suffering because of our habitual weaknesses as humans.[15]

 

This sentiment is shared across the board among Vonnegut critics and scholars. There is something fundamentally human about the way which Vonnegut presents realities where people struggle with the morality and ethics of the situations which they create.

The discussion of Kurt Vonnegut as a commentator on war is substantial, particularly because Vonnegut frequently brought up his aversion to war during his many of his interviews.[16] Moreover, scholars are interested in the timing of Vonnegut’s publications about war, in particular the connection between Slaughterhouse-Five and the Vietnam War. Even though that text is about World War II, Vonnegut chose to wait to publish the text until 1969, at the height of the United States conflict in Vietnam. Rachel McCoppin discusses this connection at length in an excellent dissection of Vonnegut’s feelings about the purposes of war.[17] Phillip Tew, Elizabeth Abele, Lawrence Broer and many others all focus on the way which Vonnegut makes the dangers of war real for his audience, especially the trauma it brings to those who have to take part in the conflict.[18] Since he is commentating on the Second World War, that is where many critics keep their discussion, especially regarding Mother Night (1961) and Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). There is also discussion of Vonnegut and his aversion to war in very late life which surrounds the open criticism he makes of the War on Terror.[19] Chris Glover explores Vonnegut’s vocal criticism of the War on Terror at length.[20]

[1] Some writers who approach Vonnegut in this manner in some of their works: M. Keith Booker, Roslynn D. Haynes, Timothy Melley, Robert Genter, Julia Kirk Blackwelder, and James O. Castagnera

[2] Though Klinkowitz is specifically trying to contextualize Vonnegut, the book is much more biography than anything else.

[3] Robert Tally. Kurt Vonnegut and the American Novel: A Postmodern Iconography. (London. Continuum Internation, 2011, Kindle Edition): location 139

[4] Hartley Spatt. “Ludic Luddite” in At Millennium’s End: New Essays on the Work of Kurt Vonnegut edited by Kevin Boon (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001): 123

[5] Margaret Daniels and Heather Bowen, “Feminist Implications of Anti-Leisure,” Journal of Leisure Research 35, no. 4 (2003) and Robert Tally, Critical Insights: Kurt Vonnegut edited by Robert Tally Jr (Amenia, NY: Salem Press, 2013

[6] Charles Shields. And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut A Life (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2011): 103

[7] Kurt Vonnegut. A Man Without a Country (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005): 15

[8] Charles Shields. And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut A Life (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2011)

[9] Donald Morse. “You Cannot Win, You Cannot Break Even, You cannot Get Out of the Game: Kurt Vonnegut and the Notion of Progress” in At Millennium’s End: New Essays on the Work of Kurt Vonnegut edited by Kevin Alexander Boon (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001): 92

[10] Loree Rackstraw. “Quantum Leaps in the Vonnegut Minefield” in At Millennium’s End: New Essays on the Work of Kurt Vonnegut ed. Kevin Boon (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001); Jeff Karon, “Science and Sensibility in the Short Fiction of Kurt Vonnegut,” in At Millennium’s End: New Essays on the Work of Kurt Vonnegut edited by Kevin Alexander Boon (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001); Adam Bogar, “Can a Machine be a Gentleman?: Machine Ethics and Ethical Machine” in At Millennium’s End: New Essays on the Work of Kurt Vonnegut ed. Kevin Boon (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001); Lorna Jowett, “Folding Time: History, Subjectivity, and Intimacy in Vonnegut” in New Critical Essays on Kurt Vonnegut, ed. David Simmons (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)

[11] Hartley Spatt. “Kurt Vonnegut: Ludic Luddite” in At Millennium’s End: New Essays on the Work of Kurt Vonnegut edited by Kevin Alexander Boon (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001): 120

[12] Ibid., 121

[13] Ibid., 123

[14] Paul Thomas. “’No Damn Cat, and No Damn Cradle’: The Fundamental Flaws in Fundamentalism according to Vonnegut” in New Critical Essays on Kurt Vonnegut edited by David Simmons (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Claire Allen. “Wampeters and Foma? Misreading Religion in Cat’s Cradle and the Book of Dave,” in New Critical Essays on Kurt Vonnegut edited by David Simmons (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); David Andrews. “Vonnegut and Aesthetic Humanism.” In At Millennium’s End: New Essays on the Work of Kurt Vonnegut, edited by Kevin Boon, (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001); Donald Morse, “You Cannot Win, You Cannot Break Even, You Cannot Get Out of the Game: Kurt Vonnegut and the Notion of Progress.” In At Millennium’s End: New Essays on the Work of Kurt Vonnegut, edited by Kevin Boon (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001)

[15] Paul Thomas. “’No Damn Cat, and No Damn Cradle’: The Fundamental Flaws in Fundamentalism according to Vonnegut” in New Critical Essays on Kurt Vonnegut edited by David Simmons (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009): 28

[16] Kurt Vonnegut. Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage (New York: Dial Press, 1981): 10

[17] Rachel McCoppin. “‘God Damn It, You’ve Got to Be Kind’: War and Altruism in the Works of Kurt Vonnegut.” In New Critical Essays on Kurt Vonnegut, edited by David Simmons (New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009);

[18] Philip Tew, “Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night (1961): Howard W. Campbell, Jr. and the Banalities of Evil.” In New Critical Essays on Kurt Vonnegut, edited by David Simmons. (New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Elizabeth Abele, The Journey Home in Kurt Vonnegut’s World War II Novels.” In New Critical Essays on Kurt Vonnegut, edited by David Simmons. (New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Lawrence Broer, “Duty Dance with Death: A Farewell to Arms and Slaughterhouse-Five.” In New Critical Essays on Kurt Vonnegut, edited by David Simmons. (New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)

[19] Vonnegut spends an entire chapter of his final autobiography, A Man Without a Country criticizing the Bush administration for their invasion of Iraq following 9/11. While he works to make clear that he is a patriot, since returning to the States after his captivity in Dresden, Vonnegut is a very vocal pacifist.

[20] Chris Glover, “Somewhere in There was Springtime: Kurt Vonnegut, His Apocalypses, and Hist Post-9/11 Heirs” in New Critical Essays on Kurt Vonnegut edited by David Simmons (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)